Livin' on a Prayer
by Transfeline
Summary: The extended backstory of a fox-eared shrine maiden whose drive to save everyone led her to cross the wrong people.
1. Heaven on Their Minds

_Once upon a time, not so long ago…_

They call it the Catastrophe. When a new update was introduced to Eldar Tale, the most popular MMORPG in the world, thirty-thousand players found themselves trapped inside the world of the game, wearing the bodies of their game characters. It's a situation straight out of .hack, only on a much bigger scale. Once inside, they soon realized that they can't logout, that the player characters - Adventurers - can still be resurrected at the Cathedral, while the NPCs - Landers - became every bit as sentient as the players, instead of endlessly repeating the same scripted dialogues.

It was the best thing that ever happened to Tamano.

Tamamo tried to brush her long pink hair behind her ears, only to find that her ears were now on the top of her head instead of on the sides. She's fashioned after a fictional character she knew and loved, but looking at herself in the mirror, the face seemed so unfamiliar. She had always thought that the biggest changes about being a girl would be not having a dick and having boobs, but now that she's actually one, she realized that the real hurdles are the ridiculously long hair and the unnecessarily complex clothes. Seriously, how the heck do you walk in these things?

She moved to undo her belt and take a look at her body, but blushed and decided against it at the last minute. She would do it when the time is right. Maybe in a bath or a shower. It's only been a few days since the Catastrophe, and since their new bodies didn't seem to sweat, personal hygiene became strictly optional. She'd probably do it when she found something nice, like a hot spring or something.

Just then, she spotted a mosquito on the mirror. "Gotcha!" she yelled as she gently slapped the surface of the mirror...and accidentally smashed it into pieces. "Owowowow!" she groaned and pulled her hand back, but then she noticed that there was no wound or blood on her hand. In fact, it didn't even hurt. "...Huh." she mused. "Well, as long as it's not seven years of bad luck..."

Not that she's lucky to begin with, of course.

After checking out her new body, she checked her friend list. She used to belong to - and in fact, headed - a guild named Guardian of the Scale, composed of seven terminally-ill Type-Moon fans who each modelled his character after a Servant from the extended Fate/Stay Night universe; it was a mistake they committed because of youth, but it was fun while it lasted. From the list of members, she saw that three had quit the Guild and unfriended her due to her inactivity, while another two had not been online for ages now. Only one name remained green and online.

Tamano decided to send him a message.

Tamamo: Heya, Faker. You there?

EMIYA: Tama-chan! Aren't you a ghost from the past.

EMIYA: I thought you got married, or something.

Tamamo: I am. To you.

EMIYA: IRL, I mean.

Tamamo: Meh, no such luck.

EMIYA: Alas!

Tamamo checked the map. The last time she was online, she started out in Akiba and made her way toward Minami, and stopped at a Lander village in the middle of nowhere for… Actually, she believed that was when she left the game; she just kinda hung around this fluffy Lander village - where no other Adventurer came because there's no monster to kill nor any facility that they could use, not a shrine or a shop or anything. This is one of those purely aesthetic locations in the game, filled with NPCs who just keep welcome you and do precisely nothing. Until now.

Tamamo: Are you near Minami? Wanna meet up there?

EMIYA: I don't think that's such a good idea.

Tamamo: Why not?

EMIYA: Things are weird here, in Minami. Someone is buying off the city.

EMIYA: I don't think anyone should come here until we got this figured out.

Tamamo shrugged. She didn't see what the big deal was. You can always buy buildings in the game to repurpose it as your personal home, and you can even ban people you don't like from entering. But just like this village, the home in the game is pure aesthetic, since all of your gears and money are stored in the Guildhall instead, and you couldn't actually buy the Guildhall and punish assholes by banning them from retrieving their own gears and money. _Or maybe you can?_ She laughed and shook her head, her hair tickling the back of her neck. _Oh, don't be silly._

Tamamo: Alrighty. I'll see you around?

EMIYA: Not if I see you first.

All done, she walked out of the room. "Hey, thank for letting me use the..." she told the Landers outside. "...The room that is used for whatever purpose that you use the room for." she said lamely. It has a mirror, but neither toilet or bathtub, so it couldn't be a bathroom; it also doesn't have a bed or a mattress, so it's not likely to be a bedroom; as far as she could tell, the small room existed solely for the large mirror and the small dressing desk underneath it. She would call it a dressing room, but it's weird as hell to have one of these in someone's personal home.

She paused when she finally took a good look at the Landers before her. She saw something in their eyes that was unfamiliar to her, something she had rarely, if ever, seen thrown her way in the real world. It took her a long while to search through her memories and find something that remotely resembled what she saw in the their eyes: the look a mouse would have on its tiny face, when it was cornered by a nimble cat or a giant snake, when it knows that their life could be over at any moment, when their furry bodies shook from the prospect of imminent death.

Fear. It was fear. That was the secret in their eyes. She tried to think of something - anything - to say, to put their minds at ease and soothe their spirits, but couldn't. What could she say? She had just smashed a mirror with bare hands without getting cut, she can cast spells that drains the entire HP bar from a Lander in a split second, and she can probably come back from the dead no matter how many times she dies, if the Cathedrals still worked as before. As far as they know, she must be some kind of god...or monster. Not like there's much difference there.

But then a panicked shout cut through the silence like a knife, and everyone turned their attention to its source. "Goblins!" shout the young man running toward the crowd. "They're coming in!" Tamamo frowned. This wasn't an Adventurer city, so obviously it's not technically a monster-free zone; but the entire point of this village was to be as unappealing to Adventurers as possible, and in the years she played she had never heard of monsters anywhere near this place. Perhaps they changed it with the newest updates? Still, feels odd to use a village as a spawn point.

She didn't have to wait long to confirm the existence of the goblins with her own two eyes. They were right there at the gate, wielding various makeshift weapon like clubs or stones except for one, an intelligent-looking (by Goblin standards) one who had a bow and a quiver of arrows. She fumbled at how to use her skills without a mouse and a keyboard, but ultimately she figured it out - with a short incantation and quick gesture and a lot of thinking about what she wants to do - and she was able to put up a barrier before the Goblins could land an arrow on her.

"The Holy Curse of Mirror!" she shouted while a magical mirror took shape above her head, its surface reflecting sunlight before it was fully formed, its golden frame slowly solidified out of the reflected sunlight. A reference to one of the three Imperial Regalia of Japan and a metaphor of the Sun, the mirror drained life force from the Goblins in the form of sparkling bubbles to send it to wounded Lander as rays of light that healed all it touches. She is no DPS, but given the level gap between her and the Goblins, she made quick work of them by simply spamming the mirror.

"Well, that did it!" she exclaimed with a sigh, slightly exasperated from the exertion. "So, as I was saying - " she turned back to the Lander, but their attention was no longer on her; instead, they were crowding around a young man with an arrow in his chest, someone Tamamo must have missed in her frantic solo fight against the Goblins. From the hushed whispers all around her, Tamamo learned that the wounded was none other than the son of the village head, a brave but reckless young man who always dreamed of being an Adventurer. The irony was not lost on her.

"Lemme take a look at him." she said, and before anyone could say anything she knelt down and inspect the wound. "A clean penetration...likely punctuation of the lungs..." she muttered in the same matter-of-fact tone you would see from a surgeon in a medical drama. The wound actually wasn't severe; if this was the real world, he could have been saved with emergency aid and a quick transfer to a hospital. But it wasn't; according to the setting, this world was thrown back to the Middle Ages by a rogue AI, and there's not a single surgeon in this world -

Until now.

"I need a knife, a needle, a roll of thread and a pair of... _chopsticks_." she told the young man's Father, the village head. "Oh, and some candle or matchsticks to burn, just in case. "

"Why -" the old gentleman stared at her blankly.

"Just go!" she snapped, and the man complied.

She tried her best to treat him, given the tools available to her. Cutting the wound open with a fruit knife instead of a scalpel wasn't ideal, but it was close enough; subbing a pair of chopsticks for a pair of pliers was considerably harder, and she only pulled it off because of her appetite for Chinese takeouts; closing the wound with needle and thread is much like in real world, but this wound was much too large, and she had to burn part of the tissue to close it with scar. But in the end it wasn't enough; she could see his life, his soul leaking out of him as sparkling bubbles.

"You did your best, Adventurer, and I thank you." the village head put a comforting and grateful hand upon her drooping shoulder. "We Landers are not like you; we're fragile and mortal, and no one can bring us back when we're dead; not even an Adventurer such as you." his tone was tired, dejected and resigned, a defeatist and fatalistic talk about the inevitability of fate and men's powerlessness in front of the senseless machination of the world. Tamamo hated that shit. There must be something, anything, that she could do, that she could at least try and -

"- Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say," she began, crossing her fingers as she recited a prayer she read from a novel with a title she couldn't remember, because she didn't know any Shinto prayers and would be damned if she go back to Sunday school, much to the confusion of the Landers around her. "I ask, if it matters, that you be forgiven for anything you may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness." she tried to imagine the wound, how the tissue was damaged, what it would take to make it whole again.

"Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which you may be eligible after the destruction of your body," light enveloped the young man's body as she prayed, preventing the sparkling bubbles of his soul from escaping, even drawing some of them back from their ascent into the sky above. "I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure your receiving said benefit." the warm light became brighter and more intense with each word she uttered.

"I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself," before their eyes, the body began to heal itself, the wound closing while the scar tissue reverted back to healthy flesh. "But which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony." the Landers were stunned by disbelief, but Tamamo was seeing none of this, because she had closed her eyes at this point of the incantation.

"Amen, allahu akbar, om mani padme hum, namo Amitabha, flying-spaghetti monster, Hail Elvis, Zelany was the name of the author and the book was _Creature of Light and Darkness_ , Q.E.D."

After lamely wrapping up her agnostic prayer with an eclectic mix of words borrowed from many major religions (along with a last-minute realization of just what the heck she was reading from and who wrote it), Tamamo kept her eyes shut for a heart-stopping moment, long enough for the Landers to wonder what she was trying to do. Tamamo, knowing this, was beginning to plan a profound apology followed by an expeditious retreat should things turn sour. Just when the suspense between the Adventurer and the Landers rose to a breaking point -

"What - what just happened?" the young men asked when he opened his eyes. Total silence descended upon the gathered crowd for a few seconds, as they all basked in awe and marvel, which soon turned into a deafening cheer that startled Tamamo, and she opened her eyes to inspect her handiwork. _Holy Mother of Christ, it worked!_ she covered her gaping mouth with an overblown sleeve. _It actually fucking worked! I can't believe -_ but her train of thought was swiftly cut off when the Landers did something unexpected: they got down on their knees and bowed.

"Tamamo-sama!" they cried. "Yulara incarnate!"

"Wait, what?" Tamamo blinked. Why does that name sounded so familiar? Think, Tamamo, think; you're a hardcore roleplayer; you know the setting of Eldar Tale better than most 90th level elitist pricks; you even know it's a post-apocalyptic setting instead of a straight-up fantasy. Who is this Yulara they're fussing over? If she recalled correctly, the setting has its own Pantheon, much like in Dungeons & Dragons; each server and thus each region of the Half-Gaia has its own unique Pantheon, and Yulara is a goddess in the Yamato pantheon... _Oh, crap._ "Hey, I'm not a - "

"Goddess!"


	2. The Sound of Silence

Ever since Tamamo resurrected the village chief's son and got mistaken for a living goddess, the Landers welcomed her into their ranks with open arms, and before she knew it weeks flew past and she had gone native, living in the village head's house and passing her days in the company of the Landers, teaching them ideas from the modern world while learning about obscure lores of Eldar Tale. For a hardcore roleplayer like herself, the situation was a real treat...with one noted exception, as she stared at the heads-up display before her eyes, for the fifth time this afternoon:

"Please select the ingredients for cooking."

Gingerly, she picked potato, carrot, beef and salt: the ingredients for a nice beef stew. A fearful but utterly expected "Ding!" later, a pot of brown substance that only superficially resembled beef stew appeared before her eyes. Cautiously pessimistic, she picked up a spoonful of the alien substances and put it in her mouth: "...I would sue anyone who feeds their dog this for cruelty against animals." she spat it out and cursed, quickly grabbing a cup of lemon water to wash the taste away from her mouth. "Jesus H Christ, what do people eat around here? Raw grass?"

While she was still brooding in what passes for a kitchen in a Lander's house, her hospitable host appeared in the doorway. "What are you doing, Tamamo-sama?" Hakuno asked cautiously. He was the son of the village chief, the young man Tamamo had brought back to life, much to the joy and relief of the villagers. Tamamo smiled wryly at the sight of him; it was obvious that he was still somewhat scared of her, but at the same time he's so fascinated by her he just couldn't stay away, and Tamamo had not the faintest of ideas how she should think or feel about this, so all she could do was smile.

"I'm just trying to cook, is all." Tamamo said simply.

"Cook?" Hakuno frowned. "What does that mean?"

"Are you screwing with me?" she raised an eyebrow.

"I - I wouldn't dare - " he stammered, fearing her wrath.

"No, I'm not mad." she sighed. "Cooking: the action of taking raw materials and ingredients and transforming them into something that will not cause an irresistible urge to hang oneself upon ingestion." Tamamo said, sarcastically, because she still thought the Lander must be fucking with her. "Definitely not the Merriam Webster definition of the word, but close enough for the purpose." she looked wistfully at the pot of not-beef-stew she had cooked up. "Lately, I'm having trouble with the 'not hanging myself' part...seriously, what DO you guys eat around here?"

"Huh." Hakuno blinked. "I have never heard of this cooking thing."

 _Beat._

"Wait, what?" it was Tamamo's turn to blink. "Are you serious?"

"Yes, I am.."

"Huh." she mused. "Well, I suppose it makes little difference now..."

As if on cue, a message arrived for her at that precise moment.

EMIYA: Do you cook, Tama-chan?

Tamamo: sarcasmNo, I just prayed to a genocidal God who I do not believe in for pastries that tastes pretty much like what we've been eating since we're stuck in this hellhole./sarcasm

Tamamo: I'm a housewife; of course I cook.

EMIYA: hahaha she's so funny hahaha

EMIYA: Seriously though, you should try.

Tamamo: How? Everything I tried to make so far turn to shit; the only option seems to be eating raw grass from lawns like an animal, at least that way you would be able to taste _something_.

EMIYA: You been using the Cooking menu?

EMIYA: Well, don't. Do it like you'd do IRL.

Tamamo: For real?

EMIYA: For real.

Tamamo: Huh. Guess I should try it out.

Tamamo: Thanks for the tip, Faker.

EMIYA: You know you love me.

Tamamo: Now, do I know that…?

Smiling, Tamamo banished Hakuno from the not-kitchen and attempted to cook as instructed by EMIYA, all knives and pans and apron (well, the apron isn't strictly necessary), and it worked like a charm: a few minutes later, she could already sense the start of a beef stew with her nose, the smell of beef blending with the fragrance of carrot and onion on their way to become a fine dish. "Well, I'll be damned." she cursed under her breath. "The Faker is right." she was so excited about this, when Hakuno came to check up on her again, he happened to catch her humming a song:

" _We gotta hold on to what we've got,_

 _It doesn't make a difference if we make it or not._

 _We got each other, and that's a lot._

 _For love, we'll give it a shot!"_

"...What was that?" he asked.

"Cooking!" she exclaimed. "See, this is what I was talking about!" she fed him a spoonful of the stew, still way too undercooked and rough around the edge, and yet his eyes grew wide as if it was the best thing he had ever tasted. "That's..." he stammered, his tongue tied, as he tried to think of a single word in his language that would describe his feeling but failed miserably, since the very concept of taste didn't exist among the Landers until Adventurers brought it to them. "It's very...uh..." he struggled to say something, anything, to compliment the maker of this stew.

"Delicious?" she offered.

"I guess?" he shrugged. "So this is cooking…but what was that other thing?"

"What other thing?"

"The thing you were doing."

"I was cooking."

"No, the other thing you were doing." he said. "While you were cooking."

Tamamo simply stared at him with a blank look on her face for a long moment, until Bon Jovi decided to invade her mind with his voice again. "...What, the song?" she asked. "It was Bon Jovi." she explained, but then: "You probably don't have Bon Jovi here, huh." she mused. "Well, they're cool. Not really my favorite or anything, but sometimes a song just pop into your mind -" she explained and wondered if the Lander's cultural progress is comparable to their technology, and they're all stuck listening to Beethoven and Mozart with no rock or hip-hop or anything like that.

"That's a forty-two?" the Lander frowned. "But it's not one of the forty-two."

"Forty-two?" Tamamo was utterly confused. "What is that, lottery number?"

"Forty-Two." he tried to explain. "Making sounds with voice or instrument."

 _Beat._

"What, _music_?"

"Yes." he nodded. "I guess."

"Ah." she nodded, satisfied with the answer...for a split of a second before she frowned. She had figured that there were some kind of translation convention going on between Adventurers and Landers; sometimes it would fail completely and you need to introduce new vocabulary into their language, such as in the case of cooking, because cooking as concept didn't even exist for the Landers; but the Landers obviously knew music as a concept, as they have their own word for it, so why didn't the translation work? Why did she hear him say "forty-two" instead of "music"?

"Why do you call it a forty-two?" she asked curiously.

"Because that's all there is." he answered truthfully.

Tamamo froze when she realized the implications of this. Her parents, in their misguided attempt to seem hip and connect with their child, once got her the original soundtrack for Eldar Tales as a Christmas present; in all truthfulness, she had never found the BGM to be particularly good, it's not Hans Zimmer or anything, but it was the only thing that saved her from being drowned in a weeklong rerun of every James Bond film EVER, so she took it with all the love and gratitude of a drowning man being thrown a lifeline, and distinctively remember the number of tracks on it.

Forty-two. That was all they had. That was all they knew. The Landers were creatively sterile.

Before Tamamo could think of what to say, they heard some commotion outside, and the village chief poked his head into the kitchen. "Tamamo-sama," he said with great revere and respect as he bowed his head at her feet. "I'm very sorry to bother you, but you have some visitors outside."

"Visitors?" Tamamo raised an eyebrow as she took off her apron, wondering who could they be. Perhaps EMIYA had decided to visit her with his new Guild? "Well, I guess I better go and meet them, then." she nodded and indicated the old gentleman to lead the way, and he complied.

Her heart sank to the bottom of her stomach when she saw her gathered visitors outside.

"See my eyes, I can hardly see!""

"Will you heal me, Tamamo-sama?"

"See my face, I can hardly live!"

"Won't you fix me, Tamamo-sama?"

"See my legs, I can hardly walk!"

"I believe you can make me well!"

"Tamamo-sama?"

"Save me!"

"Please?"

"Help me!"

"Goddess!"


	3. We Didn't Start the Fire

EMIYA: Tamamo.

Tamamo: Oh dear. You used my full name

Tamamo: Well, full MMO handle, but still.

Despite her attempt at humor, Tamamo actually shivered with a chill in her bones. Something was wrong. Something was wrong since the day she started treating all those people from out of the village. She couldn't quite put her finger around it, couldn't quite tell what exactly is wrong, but she knew it in her bones that this will blow up in her face sooner or later. She just kept living on a prayer, hoping that it was all just her paranoia talking, that everything is alright and everything is fine, and she could just pass her days as a village wise woman without attracting any attention.

EMIYA: You have to go.

Tamamo: Go where?

EMIYA: Anywhere but Minami.

EMIYA: They're coming for you.

Tamamo: Who is?

Her heart sank again, but before she could properly process her worries, EMIYA's next message made her laugh out loud and roll her eyes despite herself. _Oh, Japanese and their Engrish._

EMIYA: Plant Hwyaden.

Tamamo: Oh great, Donald Duck is coming for me.

EMIYA: Stop arguing and just go! I'll hold them off.

EMIYA: Go to Akiba and never come back.

EMIYA: Whatever you do, never, ever, step into Minami city.

Tamamo: What is this I don't even -

But before she could finish her message, EMIYA's name went dark in her friendlist. "Well, maybe he's dead." she thought with a shrug. "No biggie; he'll come back in no time with a headache and a near-death experience, and we can pick up where we left off." she thought, or at least she tried to convince herself to think that way. So she simply waited for him to come back, for his name to become green, for them to pick up the conversation where they left off as if nothing happened, for them to treat Death like a slap on the wrist as it should be. And she waited. And she waited.

Tamamo: EMIYA?

And she waited.

Tamamo: You okay?

And she waited.

Tamamo: Say something.

And she waited

Tamamo: You're scaring me.

And she waited.

Tamamo: Come on now.

And she waited.

Tamamo: This isn't funny.

And she waited.

But the name was always dark, and her messages were never delivered. She tried to speak, to say something, anything, but she choked; she tried to walk, to go somewhere, anywhere, but she stumbled. She couldn't believe it. She _refused_ to believe it. It's not possible for you to die in this game, not permanently. That's a proven truth, before and after the Catastrophe. Heck, she had even brought a Lander back to life! Unless...unless… _Someone bought the Cathedral...and banned people from it…?!_ "Fuck…!" she cursed. What kind of monster would do that?

Just then, someone knocked on the door.

"Tamamo-sama?" Hakuno called out.

"Go away!" she snapped. "Not now!"

"But someone's here to meet you."

"I don't give a fuck who wants what!"

"Oh, you'll want to meet with me." said a polite female voice which somehow sent a chill down Tamamo's spine all the way to the tip of her tail, making her skin break into cold sweat and her ears perked up in alarm. While the tone was exceedingly polite, there was something inside that voice: a barely concealed venom, like the sharp teeth in the mouth of a snake. It's a hatred that had been distilled by years of patience and calculation, a blade of despise that was sharpened by time down to the thickness of a single atom, ready for its time to strike, to kill.

She opened the door to meet with her visitor: Indicus, Elven Sorcerer, level 90. _Funny_ , she noted sarcastically, _Indicus is actually a non-venomous species_. Well, not this particular specimen.

"What do you want?" Tamamo asked. "...And what's with Plant Hwyaden and the animal motif?"

"Hey, don't look at me." Indicus shrugged. "That was on Nureha-sama, our Guild Mistress."

"Ah, fair enough." Tamamo nodded. "So can I get you anything? Coffee? Tea? Cyanide?"

"Oh, a sense of humor!" Indicus flashed a smile that reminds Tamamo of the face of a snake when it's staring down at a rat paralyzed by its venom. "That's good; we can use that."

"What do you want, lady?" Tamamo asked again, exasperatedly. _Let's just get this over with._

Indicus pulled a bag of something solid and heavy out of her inventory and tossed it to Tamamo. Tamamo opened it; it was a bag full of gold, enough to buy a large home in a city or any items that can be bought with money. "The hell is this?" the foxtail frowned and stared at the elf.

"Down payment." Indicus explain. "For your services in Plant Hwyaden as a healer. If you were to agree, we'll pay you the same amount each in-game month, with bonus thrown-in for exceptional performance during raids or other large-scale battle where your talent can be put to good use."

"You killed EMIYA." Tamamo said flatly and tossed the bag of gold at the maid's feet. "I don't want your blood money, or your Guild, or your evil plans of world-domination or whatever. Get a life."

Indicus smiled again. This time, the smiled looked more like that of an ape, or other large and aggressive primates; instead of meaning " _I'm happy and I really enjoy this conversation"_ like in human expressions, for the other primates it means " _I'm mad and I want to be killing you."_

"Well, it looks like we have an impasse." Indicus said and adjusted her glasses. "You must know that for our, ah, 'evil plans of world-domination or whatever', it's imperative that Nureha-sama gain the support of all the Landers near Minami, which includes the people in this village."

"And I'm in the way of that, since there can't be two foxtail goddesses in the same mountain." Tamamo pointed out. "Yeah, I get that, I really do. It shouldn't be a problem though; I'll just leave this part and head for Akiba or somewhere, and I'll be out of your hair before you even know it."

"I'm afraid that's not going to work."

"Why not? Please, do enlighten me."

"Because," Indicus began, her head hanging low, the reflection upon her glasses hiding her eyes, leaving her face looking like a grotesque monster with two large silver eyes with no irises and a grin that was plastered onto a face that wasn't laughing. It was straight into the uncanny valley. "I have been doing some research about you. By the account of the Landers, you've been around for almost a hundred years - oh, don't look so baffled." the maid giggled. "Two hour of our time is a full day for them, remember? And you just kinda dropped off the grid half a century ago - "

As Indicus continued talking, her tone of voice became more and more frantic. "You abandoned your Guild and your friends for some pointless reasons like medical school or moving to Europe, you destroyed all the memories that you shared together, leaving the people who loved you and adored you to fend for themselves, to look upon all the good time they had with sorrow instead of fondness - " and soon it became obvious that she wasn't talking about Tamamo at all, but some other person that had crossed her in the past. "- Just like that self-centered whore Kanami - "

" - Kanami? Of the Debauchery Tea Party?" Tamamo blinked when she finally put the pieces together. She was never powerful enough to be a member of the Tea Party, but she had the distinction to have once been an Apprentice to one of their Kannagis, and during that time she had some superficial interactions with some of its members. It all comes back to her now, the exceedingly polite tone, the obsession with the maid costume, and the resentment that was just lurking underneath the surface, waiting for a reason to lash out - "You're Kuina, Kanami's maid!"

"How did you know me?" Indicus's eyes widened in surprise when she heard the foxtail call her old username. It was finally Tamamo's turn to catch the sorcerer off guard, and she couldn't help but smiled at that. "You are too weak to be in the Tea Party..." the elf said flatly as she searched her memories for this particular foxtail, to no avail; because Tamamo had a different character back then, and as a dedicated roleplayer, her other character was very different from this one, from mannerism to personality...unlike the maid, who's basically playing two identical characters

"I can smell it." Tamamo said with a wicked smile.

"Smell it?" Indicus was utterly confused by this.

"The stink of losers, duh." Tamamo laughed mockingly at the maid, with the sort of high-pitched and haughty laughter that's reserved for rich girls in animes. "I know your type: all through your life, you've never had anything nice. Your parents wish you weren't born, you have no friends or lovers, you can't hold down a decent job. That's why even in a game, you have to be someone's lackey, to justify your existing in the first place; and when that's taken from you, woe is you and suddenly you realized that everyone owes you for your pathetic and miserable little life. "

"Flame Arrows." Indicus uttered with a voice as cold as ice, even though she was casting a spell that sent a volley of burning arrow toward Tamamo; the Kannagi did her best to deflect them with barriers, but their level gap meant that some of the arrows inevitably punched through the barrier and then her body. _In real life, the flame would actually help to close the wound and minimize the blood loss_ , she thought idly as she watched the deflected arrows hit the walls and floor and set the house on fire. While she felt sorry for Hakuno and his Father, she figured this is for the best.

 _When they saw that this house is on fire, they would know this woman is hostile._ she thought, _They will know something is wrong and get clear, so no one will be hurt by this crazy-ass bitch._ But then, a shout - several shouts, in fact - from outside almost stopped her heart faster than the arrows. "Tamamo-sama! Are you okay?" the villagers asked concernedly. "Do you need us?"

"Losing your temper, eh?" Tamamo didn't even give Indicus a chance to think about how much the Landers mattered to her, focusing the vengeful maid's attention on her by tearing her apart verbally. "Just like what a loser would do. Did what I say stir up the mud in your heart, causing all your failures and misfortunes to bubble up in your chest until you can't breath? Oh, get a grip! No one owes you anything! Everything you are or aren't, everything that you did or didn't do, all the bad things that happened to you? It wasn't the world; it was you. It was your own damned fault."

Before Indicus could cast the next round of spells, Tamamo ran. She ran out of the back door, where not many Landers could see her, and directly into the mountain. The sorcerer wasn't a big fan of pursuit by foot, and simply casted Flight to go after the kannagi. Tamamo led the maid through a winding road in the mountain, taking hit from lightning, fire and ice along the way. _That sounds like a good band name, Lightning, Fire & Ice._ she thought as she finally stopped at...actually, she wasn't even sure where the heck she was anymore, which was the entire point. It's time for the showdown.

"No, I'll not work for you." Tamamo shook her head at Indicus. "I don't team up with losers."

"You HP is low." Indicus pointed out. "One more spell from me and it's game over for you."

"Do your worst, bitch." Tamamo spat, literally. "I'd rather die than seeing that face of yours."

"As you wish." Indicus announced and adjusted her glasses again while she drew mana for the final display, a pentagon of light appearing underneath Tamamo's feet, forming the floor of a cube made of lightning flowing like quicksilver, the electricity jumping through the foxtail's body, frying her fur and cooking her fresh. "Ah, electricity, the element of least resistance." Tamamo forced a defiant smile on her face despite the fact that her knees were about to give in. "How fitting for a good-for-nothing piece of shit like you." she had the last laugh, but the maid had the last word:

"Lightning Chamber."


	4. Rusted From the Rain

The sky was the color of television, turned to a dead channel. Here came the rain again, as grey clouds wrapped around the city like a pillow meant to smother the residents, raindrops hitting his head hard, each of them a memory, a scar, raw and painful as if it was cut yesterday and salted today. He walked underneath the streetlights, their light dim from years of ill-maintenance, their colors cold and lifeless like their maintainers. He stumbled through the wreckage of broken dreams on narrow street of cobblestones, just another nameless face in a crowd of anonymity.

And the rain kept falling on his head...

"A nurse? Not a surgeon, not a doctor, but a nurse? What in God's name were you thinking? It's not a proper profession for a man; you could have been a tinker, a tailor or a sailor...you could have been anything. Are you truly my son? I don't remember being such a sissy in my youth."

And falling….

"Look, at the risk of sounding trite, I still have to say: I think you're a great guy, I do. I know what you're thinking, so I want you to know that I don't object to your profession, either. But sometimes I feel...it's difficult to love someone who doesn't love himself, you know?"

And falling…

"You think I'm wrong? You, a nurse, think me, a doctor, is fucking wrong? Wow, this has gotta be the biggest joke of the year; which one of us went to medical school, huh? Which one of us had to professional training instead of just playing nurse? Me, me, me! Just do what you're told!"

And falling…

"The doctors told us everything! He told us it's all your fault! What, are you saying that he made a mistake? Oh, please; he went to the medical school, and he came from a privileged family! Why would he lie to us? Stop trying to shift the blame to other people and just admit it's your fault!"

And falling…

"Lies. Lies we tell ourselves to get through the day. Our job mattered. Our family mattered. Our friends mattered. But the truth is, when you think about it, really think about it, nothing matters. It's all just a dream you have in a locked room, about being a person. And you can just...let go."

And falling…

He stood at the edge of the eighteenth story. From here the clouds didn't seem any closer, but the people looked like ants. It wasn't too far away from the truth, he thought; we pride ourselves as a sentient species, prizing our ability to choose our destiny, but at the end of the day, most people just keep repeating the same old routine day in and day out, like an ant following a trail, with no hope of change or release. It's a prison we made for ourselves, a gilded cage where our dreams were locked in, thinking we'll have them back when we paid off our mortgage and loans.

And he could just let go -

"Tama-chan?"

A strange yet familiar voice brought her back to reality. Well, for a given value of reality, anyways. She opened her eyes and realized that she was wearing her old clothes, a _Portal_ T-shirt and a pair of bagging jeans which doesn't fit her current body at all, and was too tight on some places while too loose in other places, and that's to say nothing about how poorly they accommodated her fluffy tail. She raised her head and look to the source of the sound, then lo and behold, standing there in a tank top and short shorts, looking larger than life, was none other than:.

"EMIYA!" she called out in surprise and relief, covering her mouth with her hands while barely suppressing the urge to jump at him for a bear hug, and it took her a while to notice the tear flowing down her cheeks. "I...I thought you were dead!" she said as she wiped the tear away from her face, thought about the circumstances more, and realized: "Well, I guess you _are_ dead...and so am I." she looked around her; they were on what appeared to be a beach, if the sand is made of white marble and the ocean is made of LCD displays. "Not bad for an afterlife."

"This isn't the end." EMIYA shook his head as he knelt down and made a bowl with his hands to scoop some water into it. "I've met others here; most of them don't stay long at all." he walked to Tamamo and showed her, and Tamamo could see, on the surface of the water, a piece of random memory from a random person: a young man who accidentally named his Guild when his cat jumped onto the keyboard and pressed "D" three times. The foxtail blinked. "What is this?" she asked and looked toward the ocean. "What is this place? Where exactly are we?"

"I think that might give us some clue." EMIYA pointed to the sky. Tamamo raised her head and saw, in the place where the Sun or the Moon should be...was Earth. Well, what appeared to be Earth, in any event. An avid astronomy nerd would tell you that it distinctively can't be Earth, since it was far too small; an avid Eldar Tale fan like Tamamo would tell you that's it's exactly one-fourth the mass and volume of our Earth. "We're on the fucking Moon?!" Tamamo blinked and looked around her. The white land. The craters. It did fit. "...So where are the rabbits?"

"Busy looking after the NEET princess, I reckon." EMIYA smiled faintly as he cracked an in-joke, but his expression soon turned serious. "Look, Tamamo, we have not much time, and quite a conversation here." he took a step forward and looked Tamamo directly in the eyes. "I won't ask you what you saw, and I won't tell you what I saw." Tamamo nodded at that. It's likely for the best. "But there's something I have to tell you, and this may be the last chance I got." he put his hands onto her shoulders and said: "You belong with me. Let's be together when I come back."

Tamamo shook her head slowly and pushed him away. "This is not me," she said, spreading her arms and turning around. "And from what I can see," she pointed at the red heart at the center of EMIYA's tank top, "This is not you either." she sat down on the beach of marble sand and wrapped her arms around her knees. "This is all just a lie. A lie we tell ourselves to get through the day, to help us escape the fact that we..." she said, and felt tears swelling up in her eyes again. "...That we're not pretty, or strong, or smart, or useful. That on the other side...we don't really matter."

EMIYA shook his head as well. "This," he said, raising his arms into the sky as if he was milking a giant cow, which made Tamamo laugh despite herself. "This is real." EMIYA smiled when he saw Tamamo's smile. "What happens on the other side," he continued, as he knelt down beside the foxtail. "Where we play a role because of our bodies or where we're born; that's the lie, a lie about who we are." he took her hands into his own and inspect the wedding ring he gave her when they got married in Eldar Tales. "You're real. I'm real. We're real. This is real. "

He looked into her eyes, and she looked into his, their eyes locked with each other before their faces got close, and their lips brushed against each other, their tongues reaching out...before they both blushed and pulled away, saying: "It might take a while for me to get used to kissing a girl/guy." and then they looked at each other and laughed, a real, heartfelt laughter that they had never experienced in the so-called real life, a laughter that can only be heard from someone who had cast away their shackles and put away their masks to face who they truly are.

Just then, light enveloped Tamamo, and her body began to evaporate into sparkling bubbles. "Well, I guess that's my cue, then." she smiled wistfully, looking at her friend with watering eyes. "I'll see you on the other side, Faker?" she asked, to which EMIYA nodded and flashed a smile bright enough to turn midnight into zenith: "I'll see you on the other side, Tama-chan." then, in that final moment, when her body had almost disappeared from the Moon and she could barely see or hear him, he added with a mischievous smile: "You know you love me, don't you?"

"Do I know that?" Tamamo said, not knowing if he could still hear it. "Yes. Yes, I do."

Tamamo opened her eyes in the Akiba Cathedral. She's the only one there, at least for the time being. She sat up on the altar and looked at her own reflection in the stained glass. She noticed that her kimono had came loose and she was dangerously close to flashing her boobs, but as she adjusted her clothes she didn't feel particularly embarrassed or awkward about it. This is her, her body, her mind, her everything. She raised her head and look to the floor of the building, where the Sun was shining down at her, giving the whole place a solemn and sacred feeling.

As an atheist by choice, she felt the need to address it.

"I'll bring you back, EMIYA. I'll bring you all back to life."

The foxtail reached a slender hand toward the Sun -

 _Oh, we're halfway there; wowow, livin' on a prayer…._

"I'll buy Manami Cathedral and unban everyone."

And flipped the bird at the glaring eye of the Sun -

 _Take my hand, and we'll make it I swear; wowow…_

" _You live for the fight when that's all that you've got!"_

And prayed.

[Every new beginning is some other beginning's end.]


End file.
